Today I pulled the engine. I had a bit of trouble getting the drivers side axle and couldn't get the slide hammer with crows foot on it until the engine was shifted with the hoist. Otherwise, here's some pictures. I didn't think to start taking them until after I got the car on stands and battery out.

That's a good stopping point for now. Next I will get the transmission separated and engine on the stand so I can break it down. Lots of work to be done but I'm sure it will be worth it!

 

Do you have to do a lot of modifications to get the engine in there? And do you know how much power you got out of it NA?

 

There were a handful of modifications to get the 2.5 in and running, but most of it was swapping over 2.3 parts like timing cover, sensors, crank pulley, flywheel, stuff like that. I did have to modify/fabricate the throttle linkage bracket to work with the factory throttle body and 2.5 intake manifold. That was pretty easy though. I can take detailed pictures for my setup if you need.

I never felt like the 2.5 was very powerful. Underwhelming is a good word. I checked timing several times, was tuned by focus-power, lots and lots of go-fast parts and never felt any better than the 2.3 in its prime and the 2.5 has just a little over 40,000 miles. One thing I did notice is the tailpipe would get black very quickly after I would clean it, but no smoke. I didn't notice it was consuming oil at a fast rate, but it was producing a good amount of blow-by in the intake manifold. Oil pressure was always on the high side between 60 and 80 psi, so I suspect the rings were leaking. I will do a leak down test before I tear anything apart, but will probably replace the rings and hone the cylinders regardless. Might as well while the engine is out and in pieces!

 

@euro-bred Was the wiring harness for the 2.5 plug-n-play with the 2.0 Duratech?

 

I'm using the harness that the car came with. Rhe factory harness. It's literally the same engine on the outside, so all you have to do is swap over all your sensors from the old engine to the new one and use your old harness. The hardest part about the swap is the a/c compressor getting in the way and getting the drivers axle out. Otherwise it's just time consuming.

Anyone who decides to do the swap needs to research, research, research, and ask lots of questions. Once it's done, you'll look back and chuckle about how simple it actually was.

 

The stroke is actually a little shorter than that of the 2.3 and has a 9.7:1 CR.

The 2.5 stroke is much better then the 2.3 at almost 4 inch , What pistons you going with ?

Tom

 

I'm sticking with the factory fusion 2.5 pistons but using molnar rods with 20mm wrist pins. I don't think I can stretch my budget anymore for new pistons, but the factory ones are low enough compression so that should be good for the boost I'll be pushing.

 

@euro-bred I hear ya on the driver’s side axle!!

I found the best way to get it out is to get a ~2’ long piece of garage door cable, loop the ends, permanently crimp them down, and connect the crimped loops around a slide hammer. Tightly wrap the cable around the backside of the axle a couple times, pull the remaining cable taught while connected to the slide axle. The axle has always come out after 5-10 pulls with the slide hammer.

You’ll want to have someone hold the housing part of the axle that butts up to the transmission in order to avoid the axle teeth dragging across the seal as the axle comes out with all the hammer pulling. Replacing that seal is a pain in the butt.

I was looking for this little cable tool the other day. I seem to have misplaced it or I’d have included pictures of it with this post.

I can do a better job of explaining, with pictures too, if anyone is interested in how I did it and can’t envision what I described above. It may take me a few days ‘cause I’ll need to buy the materials and make another one.

 

@euro-bred I hear ya on the driver’s side axle!!

I found the best way to get it out is to get a ~2’ long piece of garage door cable, loop the ends, permanently crimp them down, and connect the crimped loops around a slide hammer. Tightly wrap the cable around the backside of the axle a couple times, pull the remaining cable taught while connected to the slide axle. The axle has always come out after 5-10 pulls with the slide hammer.

You’ll want to have someone hold the housing part of the axle that butts up to the transmission in order to avoid the axle teeth dragging across the seal as the axle comes out with all the hammer pulling. Replacing that seal is a pain in the butt.

I was looking for this little cable tool the other day. I seem to have misplaced it or I’d have included pictures of it with this post.

I can do a better job of explaining, with pictures too, if anyone is interested in how I did it and can’t envision what I described above. It may take me a few days ‘cause I’ll need to buy the materials and make another one.

Glad I'm not the one lol. I always rent a slide hammer from the auto parts store and the fwd "crows foot" attachment. I never have a problem with getting it in there but this time I really struggled with it! I'm just going to not think about the possibility of a damaged output seal and cross that bridge when I come to it lol.

 

Made my own flywheel locking tool for those stubborn flywheel bolts and crankshaft bolt. Made this back in March.

Got some goodies in today. The belt is shorter than the standard belt because I'm deleting the a/c. Also got the pulley to go with it. Piston rings are also here but not pictured. The rods will be here next week.

And here's a good picture for those who want to know the best place to drill through the firewall to run stuff for your wideband, or any other gauges. It's the best place I could find, anyway. Just be careful to plan out the exact location because you can get really close to where the gas pedal mounts on the inside.

There won't be much progress over the weekend. Monday I should start tearing down the engine and cleaning up the flanges and ports.

 

Tomorrow starts the engine tear down! Going to get it on the stand and get the valve cover, oil pan, and timing cover off. I hope to take the cylinder head off along with the rods and pistons. I will measure the bore and start gapping the piston rings. I think I'm going to go with 0.018" for the top and 0.020" for the second ring, but I'll take that leap when I get there. They are just regular Mahle rings, but since this will be a turbo application I figure I still better gap them for boost. The rods should be here this week and hopefully I'll be done with the rings, but that's a tedious process.

I also started fabbing up an oil catch can for the pcv. I don't want to risk carbon build up on the valves so I'll just run a simple catch can. I'm making it out of 1/8" aluminum plate. Very simple design.

On the top I will put a flange and thread it for 6 bolts and just RTV it shut to seal. I will have a drain plug at the bottom and compression fittings on the side with clear tubing for a sight-glass. I haven't figured out how I'll have the plumbing set up for the top plate, but I think I want to route it back into my intake manifold... Buuuut I'm not sure yet. I might just have it vent into the atmosphere.

 

Cut the bottom of the pcv to remove spring and plunger , Put a hose on it and run it over and down to the trans and let it breath . you dont want it hooked to the intake at all even with a catch can

Tom

 

Yeah, I kept thinking about that and I figured it would probably be better to not have the pressurized intake hooked up to the non pressurized crankcase.

 

Got the engine apart now. Found some weird stuff, but I'll get to that in a minute.

When I took the head off, I noticed there was a LOT of carbon build up since March. There was some times where I didn't know my injectors were stuck open so I had some cylinder wash, and lots of tuning trial and error. I'm not too alarmed about the carbon, but you can see that cylinder 3 was wet for some reason. The following pictures are in order from cylinder 1 through 4.

After that, I pulled out the pistons and rods. I'm still waiting on the new rods but I will hone my cylinders then start gapping the rings accordingly. In number 1 and number 3 cylinders about halfway down I noticed a horizontal blemish. I'm hoping the hone will clear it up but should I first try something else before I use anything abrasive?

 

Honed my cylinders and I found some deep scratches in number 4. My fingernail can catch on them but they are at the top and only half an inch long. I'm not going to fight with them because they are only at the top and not much will leak through. I'm going through the process of cleaning the pistons and removing the rods then gapping the rings as I go. The top ring on number 1 is right at 0.018 and when I went to gap the second ring it gapped at 0.022 out of the box. Larger gap than I wanted. I wanted to gap it to 0.020. Oh well.

Oh! And as I was taking off the rods from the pistons something caught my eye and I wanted to share it. I thought Tom might get a kick out of this since he's been tuning the car. In this picture it's showing number 3 and 4 rods side by side. See anything weird??

Yep! Number 3 had a bent rod! I can't believe I've been driving it like that. I guess that's what you sometimes get when you but a junkyard engine. Good thing I have new rods on the way.

This picture shows how nicely the pistons are cleaning up. A little wd-40 and a scotchbrite pad makes them glisten. Still a long way to go, but making progress.

 

Last night I cleaned all the carbon off of the pistons, so now they all look new. I also gapped all the rings. The rings aren't file-to-fit, but I still wanted them to have a big enough gap for heat expansion from the turbo. To my surprise, one of the second rings gapped 0.023 out of the box. That's a big gap for being a factory replacement and 0.003 more than I wanted. At least all of the top rings are now at 0.018. Those all gapped at 0.016 out of the box which was too tight for my liking. Anyway, those are done. Waiting for the rods to come in.

Today I decided to take the valves and springs out. I didn't have the tool so to went to harbor freight and bought one... It didn't fit. I returned it and made my own out of an offset wrench and a extra deepwell socket. I cut out access notches on the socket and used the wrench as the "prybar" threaded into one of the bolt holes. Pressed the spring down and used a magnet to grab the retainers. Getting the retainers back in might be a challenge but I'll figure that out when it's time! I started cleaning the face of the cylinder head with a brass wheel/brush on a dremel. Seems to work well. It was a struggle but I think I got 90%+ carbon cleaned off. I want to get the head steamed but don't want to pay anyone to do it. Maybe I'll take it to the car wash. If that's a bad idea, let me know!

 

First I was going to say that's a rust line in the bore from water sitting in it. Then I saw the piston tops which almost look like they have impact damage. Is there a pic of the combustion chambers?
Now, onto the rod. I would almost say that the motor hydro locked (goes with the rust marks in bore), but rods that are bent in compression usually are more S shaped. Rods that are about to come through the side of the block, because the big end is seizing have your curve to them. They tend to tear off at the thinnest upper portion of the rod.

I still have a wrist pin, and upper part of a rod from a 315 Windsor motor that was run wide open with no oil .LOL It came through the oil pan!

I think someone has been inside that motor before you, and fixed some previous damage.

 

Lol good eye! When I bought the motor in February, I found out it was from a car that was in a flood. The people at the salvage yard said it had compression (which I later tested myself and all cylinders were around 180 psi. I cleaned all the sludge out, took the head off, cleaned the piston tops, and ran it. It run well and no knock. There are some rust marks I can't hone out of cylinder 3, which was the one with the bent rod, but it ran well, so I'm going to try my luck again. One of the rings broke when I removed them which makes me think it was cracked which explains why it was wet this time when I removed the head. The wrist pin is smooth in the piston, so I'm not too worried about that, and no cracks that I can see.

I am a little worried about the crank being bent but right beneath it was the balance shafts whick I'm hoping took the blow.

I think the rod was bent from when the junkyard tested compression. I don't think it was hydrolocked while running, I think it was from their test by just the starter motor... Or that's what I'm hoping anyway. Like I said, I put several thousand miles on it prior to finding the bent rod. I'm putting forged rods in it, so it should be better after that.

Makes me wonder if that's why I felt like the power was underwhelming.

 

Well, if it was my motor, and it did hydro lock, that's a hell of a load to put on that piston. If it was an NA build maybe I'd use it, but not boosted. It sucks, but I'd spring for new pistons to be on the safe side
.
If you did a compression test that cylinder should have been down a noticeable amount. Power would be down also. Crank should be fine.

 

I just googled hydrolock, and a lot of picks do show your bend. I was going off past experience with the S shape. The rods also tend to twist which cocks the piston resulting in uneven wear on the skirt, and wrist pin bore. I really wouldn't use it. Pick up a stock used one if you have to.

 

Yeah, I did a compression test and it was good, which is why I'm surprised... I know I should buy new pistons but that's not in the budget at this point. I got all of them clean and you literally can't see a difference in any of them. I numbered them so I can tell them all apart.

You think I should at least replace the one piston? I'll take pictures of it tonight. I don't remember if there was any wear on the skirt, but I get what you're saying.

 

"You think I should at least replace the one piston? " Yes

 

Yeah, I'll probably do that.

One thing to note, the junk yard broke off a spark plug and the ceramic fell into the chamber, unbeknownst to me. That's why I took the head off the first time earlier this year, because I couldn't turn the engine over by hand and found the ceramic was hitting the piston heads. Those are the marks you can see. Pitting. Not from a smash.

Tomorrow I'm taking the pistons to work and I will have our machinist measure them with a micrometer and weigh them just for my curiosity. I'd love to buy a new set of forged pistons but my wife would pitch a fit about that... More than she already is lol. I can swing a new oem replacement though.

 

So here's the pictures. The cylinder is number 3.

You can slightly feel a raise in the wall. I can't get it to hone out, so I'm going to live with it.

Here you can see the piston tops and each side of the skirts. Pistons are in order from left to right. They all are in good condition despite number 1 having nicks from spark plug ceramic. Number 2 has some wear on the skirt and I have no clue how that got there. There's no marks on the cylinder wall where it would have been rubbing and no other damages to have caused that. Some of the pistons have what looks like to be scratches on the skirts but you can't feel them at all. I'm still going to have a machinist look at them all, but I think I'm going to run them.

Keep in mind that I've already put thosands of miles on this engine and I bet I could have put many many more. I have no reason to believe that it won't handle what I'm going to throw at it. It might wear rings a little irregularly, but the car is a toy. Not a daily driver, not a race car, just something fun to tinker with. I appreciate anyone's input. I weigh all of my options and definitely don't shrug off advice because I'm still learning. During the assembly I will deep clean everything then lube all parts properly with assembly lube and make sure nothing will be an issue. I'm actually more worried about the transmission having over 220k miles and a third gear grind when I shift at a moderate speed, but that's a project for another day. I'm sure the turbo will bring it to light. And that might be a good opportunity to dig into the motor again, which is why I bought ARP studs so I can open things up without buying new hardware every time. Maybe then I will replace the pistons and crank main bearings. Who knows! But I will continue to post anything I learn or mistakes I make, along with updates. We're all here to learn and teach. That's the point of FocusFanatics, after all.

 

Make sure you straighten that rod LOL

Great Job !

Tom

 

Straighten it and send it! Funny thing is that the rod was actually about 1/8in shorter than all the others!

I have data!

#1piston top - 3.473"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782" (measured in 3 points on all)
Weight - 288.32g

#2 piston top - 3.474"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782"
Weight - 288.32g

#3 piston top - 3.473"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782"
Weight - 287.25g

#4 piston top - 3.474"
Skirt - 3.501"
Wrist pin - 0.782"
Weight - 288.39g

Right now the pistons are in the ultrasonic wash, so the weight might change slightly, but you can see that the number 3 piston weights about a gram less than the others. There is some skirt wear on number 3 which is why it probably weighs less, but all measurements are on par with the other pistons. There are no cracks or fractures, but does have a couple scratches on the inside where the rod had hit the inside of the piston. I have no reason to believe that this one is bad because it's still in tolerance. I'll post pictures when the pistons are fully cleaned and show all wear marks.

 

The weight changed a little after the untrasonic cleaning. Now the numbers are:

#1 - 288.20, from 288.32 grams
#2 - 288.15 from 288.32
#3 - 287.13 from 287.25
#4 - 288.22 from 288.39

Goes to show how much crap can rest in the ringlands. #3 is still a gram less than all the others, probably because of the skirt wear.

Here's a picture of how they now look and a picture of the inside of piston 3 where the rod hit at the wrist pin. Damage is there, but I think I'm lucky again.

 

Cleaned all the valves. Monday I will lap all valve seats, pressure wash the cylinder head, spray with oil to protect it, then start assembling valves and springs.

 

Keep doing updates on this swap please. I have been thinking about swapping from a 2.0 to 2.5 if my 2.0 blows. Also show turbo process because i planned on doing that to the new swap. Keep up the great work! Thanks.

 

Got all the valves and springs seated and in place. That was a pain to do without the right tools. Here's what I used... I don't recommend anyone else doing it this way because I was shooting parts all over the place when I'd mess up. Of course at the end I started getting the hang of it!

And kind of a poor quality picture of the job complete but I don't care because I'm done with the head.

I still need to clean up all mating surfaces and clean the block up a little, but I'm still waiting for the rods to come. I feel like they should be here by now. Maybe I'm being impatient!

 

Had a shipment of some stuff get lost in transit, then found and came in today. Just new dogbone bushings, threadlock, and black rtv. I decided to go ahead and pull the dogbone mount from the subframe and that turned into a significant project that I'm VERY grateful I had the engine removed to do it! The main vertical bolt was seized inside the bushing. Of course it broke the welds from the nut on the top! I had to use the reciprocating saw to cut through the bolt on the top side and had to cut through the bushing on the bottom. Pb blaster wouldn't penetrate. In hindsight I probably should have clamped the top of the bolt with vice grips and broke the bolt off, but I got the same result! Multiple pieces...

Fortunately I already had a spare dogbone in my stash of car parts, so all is good! I just need to get a new bolt and maaaybe weld a new nut on the top. It's a super tight fit and I'm not sure I can get a good angle with the tig without removing the steering rack. I really don't want to remove the rack.

I called massive last Wednesday and they said molnar industries was honing out the last rod and should be in the mail within the next day or Friday. They should be here this week but given my luck, I'm sure they'll get lost in shipping! I called fswerks yesterday about the status of the kit and the company they contract to build certain parts is finishing up on the downpipe and should be shipped out by the end of the week. Still lots of work to be done!

Does anyone know how to disconnect/uncouple the AC lines at the part that looks like a wafer or disk? I hate to cut them because I want it all removed the right way.

 

Rods come in today! Tomorrow I'm going to try to get the weight differences between the factory 2.5 rods and the molnar forged rods. I'm also going to double check the measurements.

I haven't been working on much... I'm thinking about fabricating my own passenger motor mount and I have a good idea how I'll do it. I might basically copy one I found online that goes to the newer ST model. I'll make it out of 1/2" plate machined to spec and 1/4 base with some more 1/2" and tig them together. I have some very heavy isolator rubber that I will use for the bushing. Something like this... Similar basic design but to fit my car.

I cleaned up my rear mount, painted it just because and pressed in the new bushings. I think it turned out pretty good!